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Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why:

If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course)

I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not?

In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift"

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias?

Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?

Yip, I'd be looking at your anchor text for sure. too much keyword rich anchor text mixed with an EMD is a bad sign to Google. Diluting it with high quality links with varied anchor text (not always with keywords of course) is an option if you can't change the anchor text yourself. Of course quality linkbuilding isn't something that just happens overnight. You really need to work on a linkbuilding strategy that builds natural links.

I agree with you that the site content is not thin, it's quite a useful site. But beware of spam signals like repetitive exact-match anchor text for your internal cross-linking.

I haven't delved too deep, but I noticed on the article "Protein powder and weight loss" you had cross linking with the anchor text "weight loss" 8 times. And I've seen "whey protein isolate" linking many times in articles.

This could be seen as a low-quality signal by Google. You should keep it down to a couple per page, and maybe change up the anchor text a bit. Such as interchanging "Whey Protein Isolate" with "WPI" or "Whey Protein Isolate (WPI)" or interchanging "weight loss" with "losing weight" or "fat loss" etc.

Thanks for getting things rolling Daniel!

Sorry, I didn't explain..."how should people win" is one of the things I want to brainstorm. whether they win based on a judges decision, or a random draw is something that we can figure out when we know what the contest involves.

The client is giving away a suit and a dress forever and ever. Also I should have mentioned. they don't have a bricks and mortar store, they're an online-based store.

I like your ideas! They will help to get a bit more engagement, which is what we're after here

And yes, what a past you do have!

Ok, thanks for putting me in my place I wondered whether I was being biased and you've helped me see that I am.

Sorry I've edited my question about authority sites, as I didn't explain it very well. When I say "if there are a whole bunch of authority sites with footer links", I simply mean if there are lots of websites with high PA/DA that have been designed by a web designer it's probably a good indication that they're a worthy web designer.

Do you still disagree with that when I reword the question?

I do negotiate the footer link as part of the deal. I do not expect it of anyone. All of my clients have been more than happy to advertise for me as they're happy with my services.

Last point: I don't do the footer links for it's SEO benefits, I'm doing it because I get a lot of traffic and enquiries through those links...therefore even if it doesn't help my rankings,  if it also doesn't hurt my rankings I will still want something there.

I'm going to try Irving Weiss' idea of a link only on the footer of the homepage.

Great idea Irving...I'm going to change all the footer links to only show in the homepage and see how this affects my rankings.

Thanks!